by Chris Turner
The street was coming to an end. Surprise. A sheer wall of stone.
Yul slammed the lightfighter up and over for a better view. A lofty wall fifty yards high, glinting of reinforced concrete. Set in a rough oval, it covered about a quarter of the city’s perimeter and looked over the grubby tenements. What was it for? Some kind of semi-transparent dome rose shimmering over the wall to further enclose a ghetto of decrepit buildings beyond.
Mentera heavy bombers and RPG drones rocketed in. Some ships bounced off the force-field of the near-transparent dome and went spinning out of control. A shield of some sort.
Yul blinked as an explosion of white light hit hard somewhere down below.
Transformers and power grids went up smoking and burning in ruined heaps outside the wall’s perimeter. The shield was down. It crackled and sizzled sparks where the edges used to meet the top of the concrete wall. The locust ships flew in, through the smoke, fires and electrical arcs while Regers’ Roamer went ballistic. Mentera cargo holds opened and dropped payloads to pepper the streets.
Masses of people scurried for safety, panicked out of their mind, hoping to evade the effects of the pressure bombs. Yul banked in for a closer look while citizens swarmed in denser configurations. Maybe they could lose Regers in the twisted streets in this protected quarter. The shield had been constructed of some semi-opaque flexible material, an electro dome, some technology similar to ship defense shields. The locusts wanted badly to penetrate this inner quarter. Why? Higher density of people? More fodder for the taking?
No time to ponder. Regers had sighted them again. His ship came roaring through the smoky haze, a streamlined blur cutting through grey webs of confusion.
Chapter 25
Regers clamped a hand on the bridge’s console beside Deakes. Multiple bogies came soaring after the Alpha Roamer in the tactical view. “Deakes, blast their asses.”
“I’ve told you, Regers,” grated Jennings. “You’re in over your head here. How long before those bugs get wise, gang up and blow us all away?”
“Dez got us a suped-up machine—extra shields, tactical AI, quad cannon, all the bells and whistles and trimmings. Not even one hit yet.”
“Until one of those bug fighters snags us in a trap and slams us good.”
“Ain’t seen it yet. I’m savoring every minute of ham-stringing this Yul Vrean. Bitch must be quaking in his boots. Look at him run!”
“Yeah, maybe because he’s got red hot bogies on his ass too,” said Deakes. “Including a stealth Mentera bomber. They must have made him, figured he’s a spy.”
“Good. Hope they nuke him. Though that too won’t matter much. We can outrun these filth puppies. Outshield ’em and outwit ’em.”
“It’s insane.” Jennings mopped his brow with a frustrated groan.
Shabby soot-covered tenements whistled by, row upon row, and the odd warehouse with sagging chimneys. Disheveled figures ran amok in the streets below at the roar of the ships hurtling overhead.
“Looks as if we’re in the slum district,” said Regers. “See those ragamuffins in lepers’ garb running about as if they haven’t a coin between them?”
“Yeah. Seems as if the rich folk had something against the commoners and boarded them up in a kind of quarantine,” Deakes remarked, “via some electro-shielded dome. Bugs made short work of it.” He laughed.
“Haha…the dumb bastards,” chuckled Regers. “They never knew the bugs’d be their saviors, freeing them from their pens. Come out, come out wherever you are, Yul baby. You can’t hide from me.”
Enemy fighters and NOA jetted across the sky. Rectangular hulks too, the mechnobots.
“It’s those badass drones of Dez’s,” muttered Deakes. “How many did he build? Only so many of those bug-wasps or moths, whatever he had, to drive ’em.”
“Maybe he bred more,” Vincent suggested.
Regers looked at the young thug with pity. “They don’t just grow those aliens on trees overnight, idiot.” He swatted at his head.
Vincent ducked his head, scowling.
Deakes pointed. “I got a line on Vrean. Target locked.”
“Bombs away.”
The torpedo flared out and tagged Vrean’s mantis’s stern. The vessel lurched, blue-green flares dashing off her shields.
Regers wet his lips in satisfaction. Payback! Always a reward so sweet when it was within grasp. “Good work, Deakes. Hit ’em hard again!”
The Roamer sprayed fire flares. The mantis fighter jumped again at Grendel’s assault and it yawed, spinning out of control to crash halfway down the street.
“Victory!” Regers shook a fist.
As dust stirred, enemy fire sprayed and startled human spectators crabbed away for cover, expecting the ship to explode, or catch on fire. The lightfighter’s port side lay angled up against a slum apartment block, jabbed through broken windows, its nose cracked and bent out of shape. Thick black smoke curled from its crumpled back end and starboard middle.
Regers clenched a first. “Circle back and finish ’em off, Jiminy.”
Jennings complied, guiding the Roamer back to the crash site.
Before Deakes could sight in for a killing blow, another ship burst out of the low-lying clouds, reaming them with fire. “What the hell—”
“Who the fuck’s this? He don’t fly like any bug,” cried Regers. “Must be Yul’s buddy come to hinder us. Blast his skinny ass!”
“Right, boss.” Vincent targeted the incoming ship while Deakes recalibrated for long range shots.
Regers called, “Deakes, forget it. Ramra, take point, scan that ship’s innards for weaknesses. Looks like a special op bug tactical vessel to me. Both of you take out this fuck then we’ll come back to finish off Yul and his pals.”
Grendel sped after the rogue mantis. It left their victim far behind. Rear cannon fire spat back at them, catching their bow shields, sending warning lights flashing on the nav panel.
“Jesus, this bitch’s a real hot dog. Some cocky crawdog. Give it to ’em, Vincent.”
Tongue clenched between teeth, Vincent locked on the escaping craft’s rear impulse engines. The special op ship wobbled in midair. It must have been malfunctioning, for it slowed. Or maybe the pilot was overconfident and misjudged. Grendel’s firepower was more than it could handle…the mantis’s shields were pummeled by Vincent’s and Deakes’s onslaught. The fuselage lit in blue and went down.
Deakes and Regers catcalled in triumph.
“Want me to finish it?” Deakes rasped.
“Naw, don’t waste any time on that shitbox,” rumbled Regers. “Jennings, get back to the crash site.”
With a curt nod, Jennings sent the ship around to the back streets many blocks away.
* * *
Yul roused from his stupor. The sound of bleeps and buzzing noises echoed in his ears. All bad sounds. His body ached. He lifted himself with difficulty and pain from a broken pilot chair. No broken bones, but his brow had suffered a good hit.
Oh, yeah, they’d crashed. His head did a little jog as memory drifted back. He unhooked the harness around his shoulders. Cloye stirred beside him, her shaky fingers clutching her safety strap. Her face was ashen. She gave a groggy moan and attempted to roll over on her side.
Yul staggered over to a slumped form lying across the bridge by the far wall. Hresh. He felt for his pulse, lifted an arm. Nothing. The scientist lay eyes up, in lifeless sprawl.
Yul visualized events as they had happened: the flare to the stern, the loss of power and emergency systems as the ship careened out of control and rammed against the building. Hresh had not been able to belt himself in in time. The impact had sent him flying across the bridge like a straw man, snapping his neck.
“A quick death’s better than stuck in a tank,” Cloye muttered. She staggered to Yul’s side.
“Let’s go, Cloye. We’ve got some surviving to do.”
“I agree.”
“Those bastards’ll be here with guns to finish us off. I
know Regers. He’ll be on our tail once they shake their pursuers.”
He grabbed an extra E1 from the broken rack and tossed one to Cloye. She limped after him.
The emergency cargo port was jammed. Yul hoofed it in with a savage kick. He shuffled through, dragging Cloye with him. Smoke poured in, stinging their eyes.
They debarked the broken craft, getting as far away from the crackling hull in case it exploded. The sounds of sniper fire greeted them in the streets.
Eyes stinging, Yul squinted up in the pale sunshine. A war-torn mess of broken masonry, twisted signposts, streetlights, fallen bodies, whispers of hostile movements lurked in the daytime shadows. Hunched figures like rats broke for cover. Stun rays lashed out, the smell of fear and sounds of capture by locust ground troopers eager to snatch a body or two. A bleak day for Xares…
Cloye’s face was soot-grimed, her left eye blackened and bruised. A cut ran along her upper right shoulder. She looked like a raccoon.
Yul’s joints creaked to new stiffness. He flexed his mechanical arm, glad of its strength and its 1.5 factor of strength. He’d need it in the moments ahead.
He gripped his blaster, glad of the extra slung at his hip. “Let’s move out, Cloye, before locusts—” Jesus, there was Regers’ monster stealth craft hanging in the air! But wait, another mantis craft. A special op ship, barreling down on him with sleek neck, extra cannons and oversized bridge. Fenli. “Run!”
* * *
Grendel swooped low and hovered over the wreck of Yul’s crumpled mantis flyer.
“Don’t see Vrean jumping out of his tin can.” Regers frowned.
Jennings grunted. “Not picking up any life readings.”
“Why should you? They must have died.”
“Not necessarily, Vincent. We have to go out there and check. I need closure on this.”
Ramra pointed at the holoview. “Fleeing figures at 6 o’clock. By that dilapidated tenement.”
“Well, I’ll be a fucking baboon. Ramra, zoom in.”
He flipped the holo’s controls to show better resolution: two figures, one man, one woman, staggering like wind-tossed scarecrows along a black line of debris for shelter.
“It’s him,” muttered Regers. “I’d know that husky ratfink and his boring face anywhere. We go in—on foot.”
“Hate to tell you, Regers,” said Jennings, “but that last hit knocked out our gyros. We’re going down.”
Regers hissed every lewd word ever to leave human lips. “Land this crate then, you fuck—We’re going in on foot.”
“Then what?”
“Shut up! Just land it.”
A jerky landing jarred them back in their seats. The impulse engines sputtered then hissed a dying lament as they came to a shaky halt before an overturned air taxi. The smoking underbelly landed struts down about a hundred yards from the ruins of Vrean’s crumpled mantis craft.
“Bastards must have slipped into the walled slum north,” muttered Regers. “The alleys’re too narrow to fit our ship anyways. Deakes—you, me and Vincent are going in as a team. Jiminy, what’s the status of the amphibious portable vehicle Dez outfitted us with?”
“Sensors show it’s operational.”
“Good. Ramra you take the APV and cover us.” Ramra’s mouth worked while Deakes and Vincent griped about being on land patrol. “Don’t trust those bugs not to waylay us. Jennings, you guard the ship in case we can fix it. No, wait—” He scowled. “Don’t trust you with Grendel on your own. Better you come with us. We’ll set the electro shock mechanism on the exterior to discourage any scavengers.”
They hopped out onto the dusty ground. The rust-brown, camouflaged APV whirred at Ramra’s touch. It floated over the four standing beside the defunct Grendel. Ramra, sitting in the pilot’s seat, saluted Regers through the glass. He turned to give them a wink and a thumbs up.
“Give a kid a toy to play with and he’s happier than a pig in shit,” muttered Regers.
Deakes squinted. “Think he can handle it?”
“He better.” Regers shrugged. “Whether he can or not, Deakes, is besides the point. I need you and Vincent on the ground with me. Still don’t trust Jennings here enough to drive an assault vehicle.”
“Why don’t you get one of us to—”
“I told you already.” Regers said briskly. “It’s decided. Deakes, Vincent, Jennings. Let’s go.”
Chapter 26
Yul and Cloye dogged it in a slum city within a city, now a prime target of the Mentera slavers with the dome breached. Sounds of mayhem and blaster fire echoed from the soot-grimed stone. Yul cringed, his ears rebelling at the sounds of wartime terror: shrieks, screams, cries of dying, pain and mad laughter turned to heart-wrenching sobs. Stun bombs dropped from Mentera scout raiders on various parts of the city. Hordes of the population lolled dazed. Trams, monorails, air buses came to a standstill as private air-cars fell out of the sky. Communications went dead as the Mentera pulse waves fell upon the city along with the brunt of the Force 2 jammers. The city was a ravaged war zone, a booby trap waiting to happen: buildings reduced to ruins, fallen live wires, thousands dead in the streets.
The survivors were easy pickings for the locusts after the blitz, the signature Mentera-Zikri MO, same as the last planet. Men, women and children who’d escaped the stun blasts fled through the streets in wild, mad panic. They sought any shelter, from dark holes amidst the fresh rubble, to open sewers blasted open by enemy guns. Other more intrepid defenders grabbed up guns and whatever weaponry they could—mostly chunks of metal from the heaped-up rubble. They organized themselves into makeshift vigilante groups, fighting Mentera stormtroopers as buildings toppled and power stations crackled and smoked. The fraternal street gangs had the best chance of surviving, but Yul reckoned those groups were too few and far between to make any appreciable difference in this free-for-all apocalypse. Endless streams of locusts poured out of the landed lightfighters or wide-bodied convoys, clutching lumo blasters or stun guns in pincers, scouring the streets and buildings, dragging fresh captives into slave ships.
A city turned mad within moments by hideous creatures from far worlds. Looting and rapine. Crimes committed by no less unscrupulous domestic scavengers. The ugly underside of the modern city had reared its warted head.
What happens in an orderly world when every day routine goes to shit? When hard-working citizens are thrust into topsy-turvy madness, anarchy, dark impulse. When quiet, mild-mannered Ned on your neighborhood block becomes a killer and rapist overnight? When the good at heart, and the sensitive soul, realize that every breath, every moment of life is a waking luxury?
Is it all just illusion? Yul remained locked in a semi-daze.
Show your face, ghoul of nightmares past. Don’t be shy…There’s a bucket of blood for everybody…He shook his head, urging his brain to snap out of its weary funk.
“Yul, you okay?” Cloye grabbed his arm, steadied him.
“I’m okay. Everything good.”
“For a second you looked half zoned out, like you were losing it.”
“Yeah, just feeling woozy. Probably when we hit that wall.”
She held his head in both hands. “We’re alive for the moment. I don't know why we’re still standing on our two feet.”
“Because we’re survivors, Cloye,” said Yul hoarsely. “Part of our nature.”
Cloye sucked in a heavy breath.
Yul’s vision swam. He snapped himself back to reality as another bleak space threatened to wash over him. He had experienced such washouts before, fighting out in war zones, battling squids in The Dim Zone, defending the crippled Albatross from ambush, caught between gangs out in Aldebaran, pinned down by snipers in besieged Catawaln, other grim scenarios too numerous for his cloudy mind to recall.
Hresh dead. Fenli down. Miko likely in the same place with all his crew. Only himself and Cloye left to fight this bitter war. Stranded on a doomed planet with only their blasters and wits. Not enough to win against these fucking
bugs and squids.
But soldier on they must. They were not quitters. Of all people, he was glad to have Cloye at his side.
As they passed a ruined tenant building, a balcony gave way. A crumbling concrete slab slid down and almost brained them. They ran crouching for shelter down a deserted alley. Vacant for some reason…danger? A trap? The Mentera had cleaned everything and everybody out here.
Yul licked his lips. He moved on through the garbage and rotten filth and rubble; Cloye padded ever-alert at his heels. They came out into a dirty square with scattered groups of ragged survivors staggering about, labored of breath. Hostile fire flashed out from up a radiating alley. A brown, rag-garbed man fell at their feet.
Cloye recoiled. She dropped in a crouch, her rifle gripped. “Let’s get out of here.” Defiance lay pasted on her dusty lips. Yul nodded. They pushed on past straggling groups and fallen bodies. The dead were of no use to the Mentera. Easiest to leave the bodies rotting in the streets.
Deeper down into the narrow, winding alley they plunged, with aim to get as far from the lurking slavers as possible.
Yul’s face wrinkled at the sight of three more bodies, torn, charred and twisted in the rubble. These were the sketchy remains of two men and a woman, one singed by blaster fire, the others hit by burning fallout. Passers-by, garbed in ragged wool and cotton, surged past, heedless of those crushed by falling debris.
Life reduced to ignoble mockery. What did it all mean?
“If we get out of this in one piece, Yul,” said Cloye, “you and I are going to have us a lie down and make love till we can’t move.”
Yul turned, his mouth worked, her words hardly bearing meaning to him in this grim moment.
“Call it a celebration over death,” she added.
